Homeless woman's horrible death / She was doused with gas and set on fire after she told police who had robbed her -- 2 women held

Jaxon Van Derbeken, Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writers

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, February 15, 2007

Photo: Brant Ward

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outreach025_ward.jpg Jill breaks down and cries as she sees Ricky taken off by the police again on Jones Street. They are like an old married couple...sometimes fighting but relying on each other.
In 2004, the city of San Francisco started to implement the Care Not Cash program. One aspect of the program was to send outreach workers into the streets to contact the chronically homeless people and try to place them in hotel rooms. On Jones Street in the Tenderloin, several homeless people were helped inside, while others proved more difficult.
9/14/04 Brant Ward less

outreach025_ward.jpg Jill breaks down and cries as she sees Ricky taken off by the police again on Jones Street. They are like an old married couple...sometimes fighting but relying on each other.
In 2004, the ... more

Photo: Brant Ward

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outreach166_ward.jpg Having been kicked out of their two hotels, Jill May and Ricky find themselves homeless on Jones Street again...their outreach workers have not made contact with them in weeks! Brant Ward 12/2/04 less

outreach166_ward.jpg Having been kicked out of their two hotels, Jill May and Ricky find themselves homeless on Jones Street again...their outreach workers have not made contact with them in weeks! Brant Ward ... more

Photo: Brant Ward

Homeless woman's horrible death / She was doused with gas and set on fire after she told police who had robbed her -- 2 women held

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In a crime prosecutors say showed "exceptional depravity," two San Francisco women stand accused of dousing a longtime homeless woman with gasoline and burning her alive in an apparent witness retaliation slaying.

Mia Sagote, 30, and Leslie Siliga, 29, are believed to have selected the victim, Leslie "Jill" May, 49, after May told police on the day of her death that she had been robbed by Sagote on the street in the Tenderloin the day before.

"The victim was kidnapped off the street and taken to Candlestick Park, doused with gasoline and set on fire," said Assistant District Attorney George Butterworth. He said the crime was especially heinous and showed "exceptional depravity."

Authorities say May was first accosted in the Tenderloin the morning of Jan. 11 by Sagote, who was angry that May's boyfriend owed her $150 on a loan. When May said she had no money, Sagote allegedly slammed May to a wall, then threw her to the ground and punched her face, police said.

Later that morning, Sagote pulled May behind a trash container and stripped the victim of her clothing and cash, leaving her naked behind a garbage bin, authorities say. The incident was witnessed, according to police.

May went to authorities the next day and reported the crime. Authorities believe that at least one of the women involved had learned, apparently by word on the street, of May's police report naming Sagote. That afternoon, May was back in the Tenderloin when she was approached by two women, forced into the backseat of a car, and driven to the stadium parking lot at Candlestick Point and set on fire, authorities said.

Sagote, who was arrested on Jan. 23, is charged separately in the robbery of May on Jan. 11. Siliga was arrested Tuesday and appeared in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty. Both women are charged with murder and murder in commission of a kidnapping, which could lead to life in prison without parole.

Both remain in custody and are scheduled to return to court on Feb. 22.

May had been a longtime homeless woman and crack addict who stayed in the Tenderloin. She was one of the hardcore homeless who had been identified for outreach help under Mayor Gavin Newsom's effort to move the chronically homeless off the street and into housing and social service programs.

May told her story to The Chronicle in 2004. She said her mother was a drunk, and when May was 12, she found her mother dead on the kitchen floor from alcohol poisoning.

The girl was then raised in Pocatello, Idaho, by her father, but she ran away, she said, after he raped and impregnated her at age 16.

After a miscarriage, she became a prostitute and came to the Bay Area in 1976. She and Ricky Smith -- a onetime pimp known as "Slick Rick" who had 24 prostitutes working for him -- shared a life on and off the streets. They had three children together.

Back then, May was a stunner dubbed "Legs" who attracted business from men of all professions and income levels, according to people who knew her.

"She had legs like Tina Turner, you know?" Smith said on a recent afternoon.

"Jill was a classy hooker," agreed her longtime friend Anne Griffin. "She had that personality. She had that look. She was the glamorous girl -- she looked like she stepped out of a magazine."

In the 1990s, May and Smith struggled with parenthood and keeping a roof over their heads, eventually turning over their children to Smith's brother to raise.

The couple repeatedly had been arrested for drugs and prostitution but never entered into court-ordered rehabilitation programs. They ended up living on two blocks of the Tenderloin on Jones Street, between Geary and Ellis streets.

Addicted to heroin and crack, May lost her teeth and so much weight she was practically skin and bones. Her once-famous legs grew infected from dirty syringes, and she couldn't walk anymore so much as shuffle.

In 2004, May told a Chronicle reporter, "Just one day before I die, I'm going to see the Statue of Liberty. I'm going to get on a Greyhound bus, see the country. Go to school, get a job. I want to do normal things."

Last fall, with the assistance of the city, the couple finally got permanent housing, but May still spent her days out on Jones Street using drugs. The city outreach team leader said May was singled out for efforts on a regular basis.

"It's horrible. It's a tragedy," said Fire Department paramedic Capt. Niels Tangherlini, who heads a city outreach team working with San Francisco's hard-core homeless population. "It's really sad -- we feel like we invested our heart and soul in her situation. We felt her situation was finally improving. Then the street can reach and grab some people.

"It was wrong -- for all she had been through, it felt very wrong," Tangherlini said.

Friends recently held a memorial for May, remembering her as someone who cared about her fellow downtrodden of the Tenderloin.

"Oh man, I miss Jill," Smith said. "She used to get on my nerves. I loved her, though. Jill had a one-track mind. She never had enough drugs. I worried about her all the time. Now I can rest, man."

How to help

City outreach workers who tried to get Leslie "Jill" May into housing have set up a fund to help pay for her burial. For information, e-mail Ben Amyes at benjamin.amyes@sfgov.org.

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